I never thought I’d be the policy person. I’ve always been the person who laughs and policy and just gets on with the job. However, someone out there thought I was a grown up and now I’m creating policy.

The fact is that to convince many companies and departments to become more engaged, we need to make them feel safe. Policy does that. To be honest, there’s a lot of very good sense in creating intelligent guidelines around social media

One myth in this space is that you can just copy someone else’s policy. That may be true for some, but for many of us in the Gov 2.0 space, it’s about creating your own and referencing others. We end up talking to each other and sharing our suggestions and challenges.

One of my key contacts is Craig Thomler who’s currently working on the YourHealth taskforce at the Health Department. His excellent blog http://egovau.blogspot.com/ is a great reference tool for those of us working in this space. He lists this website as a good starting point for social media policy http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php

Sydney Harbour…what a great location for a conference!

So here I am at Frocomm’s latest New Media Summit. This time it’s in Sydney, right on the Harbour at the Sebel Pier One. Watching great panel conversation about how social media is changing the face of public relations. Gerry McCusker from prdisasters.com makes a really good point that PR execs trying to control new media by spending lots of time on strategy etc. Gerry says these execs are missing the point and he’s right. Walter Jennings from The Perception Counsel talks about the need for authenticity. Question is, are PR people ready to be authentic? Do they know how to be?

I get a bit embarassed in this space because I don’t know everything. I’d like to know everything. It would give me a nice warm rosy glow as I handed down wisdom from the mount. Instead, I’m learning as I go. It’s like I’m a multimedia explorer. Now I just need a pith helmet and binoculars! To be fair, we’re all exploring this space and we’re all at different levels. We’ve explored the physical world, so now we’ve turned our attention to the online world.

Anyway, I’ve been given a very real lesson in third party applications. I was having real problems getting all my music off my old ipod. I just couldn’t unlock it.

Basically, Apple is trying its hardest to stop us easily transferring music, in a bid to stop piracy. I understand that, but I want my music!

So, I did what any explorer does. I Googled. I read various mac user sites. In the end, I downloaded (and paid for) Copy Trans (www.copytrans.net). It cost about $25 and was well worth it, just to see my music effortlessly download onto my computer. You can download 100 tracks for free and then pay for the rest.

I did try some freeware, but found it frustrating, bug ridden and complicated.

I guess the lesson I learnt is that the iPhone and iPod do have problems, and this is an ode to the creators of the solutions. Without them, I just would have tried cracking my ipod with an icepick in a bid to get the tracks out.

I must add, the gaps in the iPhone and iPod are bloody frustrating and counter intuitive. But that’s a conversation for another day.

I’ve been reading a really interesting post by Che Tibby, about the need for guerilla tactics when trying to introduce web 2.0 projects into a government department or private enterprise: http://objectdart.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/sourcing-public-participation/

Che cites the example of New Zealand’s National Road Safety Committee and how staff went about setting up its Road Safety Forum. They found they had a lot of resistance from their IT department.

This is really typical of a lot of IT departments. I first encountered it at a Government agency I once worked for. We needed to get RSS up in order for our new podcasts to be a real podcast, as opposed to a downloadable audio file.

The IT department told us it had many other priorities and it could take more than a year to get RSS up and running.

In the end, one of the fabulous negotiators from the agency’s website spoke to a contact in the IT department, and RSS was enabled in less than a day.

But I remember being so shocked. I thought that IT departments would be really encouraging of social media, but as Che says in his post: ‘ICT support in many agencies usually centres exclusively on the provision of certain core services. Anything slightly innovative is viewed with skepticism, distrust, and passive aggression’.

One Government client I worked for virtually had to sign his life away to guarantee to his IT department that one little podcast wouldn’t bring down the entire website.

Having spoken to IT staff, I think part of the problem is security. The other thing is that they’re understaffed and have many competing priorities.

One thing I find really interesting is the number of IT Departments who try to hose down Web 2.0 projects by saying “we don’t have the bandwidth”. And everyone just nods their heads and goes back to their desks. IT departments have done really well out of this, but now I’m seeing a trend where people are finally firing back with “OK, how do we get more bandwidth?”. When they’re told it will be expensive, they say “OK, well give me the figures”.

One Government Department I know had such a difficult time getting Web 2.0 material up on its website that it’s outsourced it to a private company. They were quoted more than a million dollars by the IT Department for a service that’s costing them much, much less.

And other departments are going around in circles, trying to convince a reluctant Executive to approve web 2.0 projects. They just keep hitting brick walls.

So, what’s the answer? I think Che is right. Guerilla tactics are needed. Sometimes it’s much better to seek forgiveness than ask permission. I know of one Government agency that has been debating setting up a Facebook page for at least a year. In the meantime, a staffer from Queensland set up his own page, which appears to be an official site.

The Government agency and its IT Department had legitimate reasons to be concerned. It’s not allowed to put its IP on a foreign server without special permission. However, as one Gen Y PR graduate said to me “But all the interesting stuff is on foreign servers”…

So, how do we work with (and not against) reluctant IT departments? Do we feel their pain and give up quietly, do we fight them, or can we find a middle ground? Plenty of public servants are dealing with this issue right now, and its driving many of them demented.

But just to give you hope…I’m loving what the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has done with its iPhone weather radar application. Fantastic!

Anyone who says the iPhone is just a glorified phone has no sense of fun or adventure! I’m writing this post from my iPhone using the wordpress application. I’ve been showing friends my new gadget all weekend and the unanimous reaction has been laughter. I distracted my son for ages this morning with the carling iBeer app. I haven’t read about this on any parenting magazine though. I even used the phone to take photos at my son’s best friend’s transformers birthday party.

Is there a future for multimedia in this uncertain economic environment? Will it just be seen as an expensive novelty? IT financial expert Angus Matheson and I were invited to speak to the Sydney chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators this week.

We basically agreed that financial institutions ignore ‘new’ media at their peril. There has never been a more important time for them to communicate truthfully and effectively. This is not the time for spin or obfuscation. Clear, smart, non patronising communication is vital.

And why concentrate on conventional media when it only represents about a quarter of the communication equation.

We both felt the audience was very responsive to this message and it was good to see such a switched on group. It will certainly be very interesting to see how the financial world uses multimedia to communicate with an increasingly concerned audience…

My name is shimmmergirl and I’m a Marantzaholic. I’ve been podcasting for two years now. And I’m yet to find a recording device I love as much as the Marantz PMD660 solid state recorder http://www.d-mpro.com/users/folder.asp?FolderID=3629

There are tinier, funkier models out there, but they drive me crazy. I was using a client’s Edirol recently, and we just there for hours trying to figure out the jog wheel, the audio levels and the inputs. 

Now, I’m as shallow as the next girl, and I must confess I love the way the Zoom and the Edirol look. They’re like tiny plastic silver coloured sputniks. Lots of bling, lots of mesh, lots of tiny, tiny buttons.

In comparison, the Marantz PMD660 is a big clunker. It’s a black box. No way around it. But it is so easy to use. It works like an old fashioned tape recorder. You remember those? Play. Stop. Record.  It records onto a flash card which downloads onto your computer in perfect wav or mp3 format. Done. Is it heavy? Well if you can carry a small lunch box, you can cope with the Marantz. It’s surprisingly light for its size.

For my money, it’s the only journalistic recorder. It has a three pronged microphone jack at the back, which allows you to plug into splitter boxes at press conferences. Most of the others don’t have this, which poses all kinds of problems at high level media conferences.

A word of caution though. Do read the manual. You need to get your input settings right. I swear I had everything on internal microphone for about a year. Actually, the internal mic is great, but it’s worth getting a good Rode microphone or something similar.

I’ve got a lot of clients who are being advised badly about recording audio. They’re buying second rate equipment and getting third rate sound.

The Marantz is selling for under $1,000 at the moment. It’s worth the investment.

I know these are fighting words. My friend and multimedia guru, Ross Monaghan http://www.themediapod.net/swears by the Edirol. But Ross, I would point out it ran out of battery power half way through a panel discussion I was part of at Frocomm’s New Media Summit in Melbourne last month http://www.frocomm.com.au/prnm2008_melb/program.php.

And now it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. I have been missing my Marantz. It actually wasn’t mine, it belonged to my previous employer, CSIRO. And now it’s time for my own.

OK, I’ve finally accepted that I’m shallow and a complete sucker for marketing hype. I am getting an iPhone, even though I’m only 6 months into my current contract with Virgin Mobile for a Nokia. I just couldn’t stand it anymore. When Virgin told me the payout figure for the Nokia I took a deep breath. It was shock, but the operator thought it was indecision and knocked off $100. And so, the iPhone arrives on Tuesday.

The thing is, I don’t know if I qualify as a multimedia princess without an iPhone. It’s a bit like when you have a new baby and all the parents in the shopping centres start eyeing off your pram. You can’t work in the multimedia space without some hot gadgets. And the iPhone is one very hot gadget.

I must say the Virgin Mobile deal was very good. Much better than previous plans.

So, what do you think of the iPhone so far? Is it everything you hoped for? Everyone I speak to describes it as  a quantum leap in technology. I can’t wait to use it, but admit that I’m a bit nervous too. I’ve vowed to actually read ‘the manual’ with this one.

I’ve never been a manual reader, and have the scars to prove it!